


so bring on your wrecking ball

by kimaracretak



Category: Nikita (TV 2010), Spooks | MI-5
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:54:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosalind Myers came to New York running away from a name that didn’t fit her anymore and an organization she couldn’t belong to, running to a woman she had thought she could love. She went on missions and shot the bad guys and pretended that she was facing down the demons of her past. Acted like nothing had changed, like Division had never broken her and it didn’t now hate her.</p><p>(Or: the one where Ros was a Division agent, and the one where she wonders if she can come back. Canon divergent post Spooks 6x08.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ros makes the call as soon as she lands in New York. It’s a pay phone, a number that she’s known by heart for over twenty years and hadn’t dialed in fifteen, but the woman who answers sounds like she hasn’t aged at all.

“You sound surprisingly calm for a dead woman,” Amanda’s voice is tinged with amusement, just as silky sweet as Ros remembers and twice as lethal.

“And you sound remarkably calm for someone talking to a ghost. We need to meet,” she adds quickly, preempting whatever else Amanda might have to say, deciding it’s not worth wondering how Amanda had known it was her on the line.

She can hear Amanda’s smile as the other woman replies, “I’m surprised you came here at all, Rosalind. There’s three or four agencies full of people who would love nothing more than your head on a pike – literally. Or did you miss me that much?”

Ros rolls her eyes. “Hogan’s seen my dead body, Amanda, I think that’ll keep them quiet for a while. And lovely as your face is, that’s not the reason I’m back. We need to talk about Yalta.”

The silence on the other end of the phone goes on so long that Ros wonders if Amanda has hung up on her. Cut her losses and decided that a burned MI-5 agent who had betrayed everyone she had ever worked with was too hot to handle. _Fair question,_ Ros thinks bitterly. She’d probably make that call herself, in Amanda’s position.

Some impatient New Yorker is pounding on the wall of the telephone booth by the time Amanda quietly rattles off a string of numbers and letters that Ros remembers very well from her time at Division. A little coffee shop well off the tourist track and out of the way of city cameras, but boisterous enough inside that there was little to no chance of being overheard. “Twenty minutes, then,” she says, and hangs up before Amanda has a chance to respond. She pulls up her hood, exits the phone booth, and starts walking. She has a few errands to run first.

*

Ros watches Amanda approach from the shadows, running her fingers along the blade she’s picked up along the way. Tiny, the razor, but it will work until she has the time to buy something else.

Amanda is dressed more casually than Ros remembers: a dark blue button down shirt tucked into jeans and boots that looked positively lethal – though whether to Amanda or whatever poor bugger tried to cross her path, Ros couldn’t say.

She has a feeling she’s about to find out, though, as the young drunk stumbling out of the pub next door takes one look at Amanda and decides she’d be a nice end to his night out. Ros can’t make out the words, but his hand on Amanda’s ass is clear enough. Under the streetlight, Ros can clearly see Amanda’s eyes narrow and the smile that twists her lips isn’t anywhere near as friendly as the man takes it to be.

“I think not,” Amanda says clearly, closing the offending hand in a grip that Ros knows from firsthand experience is more painful than it looks. She has a pretty clear idea of where this is going. sure enough, the man protests cheerfully, pushing closer to Amanda – and she drives her heel into his foot and twists his wrist away with an audible crack that makes Ros wince in sympathy.

The drunk gets his feet under him enough to run down the street screaming about harassment and broken bones, and Ros has to laugh. She’s still laughing a moment later as Amanda comes up to her and drops feather-light kisses on her cheeks. “Such a baby,” Amanda sighs as if she’s been doing nothing more stressful than watching television, and Ros’s laughter dies in her throat. “He’ll be fine in a few days, it’s just a sprain. Maybe he’ll think twice about grabbing the next woman he sees, hm?”

Ros knows what at least fifteen of those little hums mean, and this particular one is her _we’ve shared so much, let’s just be friends for tonight_ one. It’s a blatant attempt to put Ros off, and she’s almost disappointed that Amanda’s chosen to start out so obviously. “Yes,” she says shortly, “and you were far kinder to him than I would have been. Let’s go inside.”

Something that might have been regret crosses Amanda’s face briefly, but she nods her assent and follows Ros into the cafe.

*

“So,” Amanda smiles after they’ve tucked themselves in the back of the cafe. “I can’t say I’m sorry to have you back, but I am sorry for how you spent the past few days.”

Ros snorts incredulously. “ _S_ _orry?_ Amanda, Juliet killed me and MI-5 put me in a coffin. I betrayed everyone I loved and have no life anymore so please, let’s not talk about sorry and let’s move on to what went wrong with Yalta.”

“Yalta,” Amanda tilts her head, blinks slowly. “Yes, I work with them stateside.”

“I figured that out when Magritte tortured me, thanks. Next time you want to recruit me into your conspiracies maybe you shouldn’t use my former partner. You’re slipping.”

Amanda quirks her eyebrow. “Ros, you assume I wanted to stay hidden. Maybe I just saw an opportunity to let you do something more productive for a change.”

“Productive?” Ros spits. “Oh, yes, you all talked a very good game – good enough that I believed you, and not just because I was looking for something to believe in after Zaf. But don’t you dare try to tell me those bombs would have created a true and lasting peace.”

Amanda laughs softly and takes another sip of her coffee. “Yes, Juliet did make quite a mess of that, didn’t she?”

Ros tries not to let her irritation show on her face. She has no doubt that Amanda knows exactly how angry she is, but she doesn’t have to give the other woman the satisfaction of showing her. “A mess that has your fingerprints all over it Amanda.”

“Oh, Ros,” Amanda shakes her head with something like pity. “Because they knew exactly how to bring you in? Because you thought I was the only one who knew you like that? You’re a very cold woman Ros, but you’ve let more people in than you think.”

 _Amanda. Magritte. Adam. Jo._ “Stop.”

But Amanda’s never been good at knowing when to stop. _E_ _specially when I’m concerned,_ Ros thinks, and the spark of pride that ignites in her is almost enough to distract her. Almost. When Amanda reaches out to tuck her hair back behind her ear, Ros grabs her hand and forces it back down to the table. “No. You lost that privilege a long time ago, and I think we both know it.”

“Well,” Amanda leans back against the wall of the booth. “I deserved that. Nothing personal going forward then, is that right?”

“I think that would be for the best,” Ros agrees, although she has no illusions that Amanda will keep to her word. Everything’s personal as far as Amanda’s concerned, everything from having sex to launching a grenade to – leaving. And there was the heart of their problem: Ros left. She stopped being an impressionable young officer seconded from MI-6 who was enchanted by everything American, most especially by the glamorous assassin turned psychologist who had trained her, and she became a cold, brittle, broken MI-5 officer.

_Ros returned from her first mission drunk – on success, Amanda hoped, but there was a slightly wild look about her that gave lie to that hope very quickly. She stood between Steven and Marta, eyes bright and cheeks flushed, with a slight tremble in her hands that suggested she had been drinking – more than was good for her, and certainly more than any on-duty agent should have been. Amanda stood in front of them, arms crossed and glare firmly in place. “Report,” she said icily._

_Cristopher, the team leader for Ros’s graduation mission, shrugged. “She did well. Better than nearly all of the recruits I’ve seen.”_

“ _We lost contact with Steven for a period of seventy-two seconds after we received confirmation that the perimeter was clear. Why?” What she really wanted to know was what had happened after the mission, why Ros looked like she did, but those questions would wait for the individual debrief, not the straight-off-the-elevator clipped report that was necessary after all graduation missions._

_Steven shrugged. “That tech’s not as good as you said. The radio smashed against the wall during hand to hand and I had to replace a couple of the transistors.”_

“ _Fine. give it to Technical for review and replacement.” Ros’s eyes were burning a hole in her skull, so she turned to the blonde next. “Ros,” her voice was instantly more inviting. “Congratulations on becoming an agent.”_

_Ros smiled. “Thank you. it was . . . very eye-opening.”_

_Good. Eye-opening was good. How a recruit reacted to becoming an agent in the first few hours after their mission was complete was critical. Some were shaken, horrified at having caused the death of another. Those were immediately shunted into desk work – intelligence gathering, medical, and the like. Amanda would have preferred to kill them – no point wasting valuable space, and those who couldn’t stand to kill often didn’t do well in their less-demanding jobs. But Percy had convinced her to bow to Carla in that respect, and Amanda had given her grudging assent. Some fell in love with the power of killing, and reacted with unmitigated glee untempered by any sort of rationality. Amanda kept the ones who could be useful and killed the ones who were too violent. Carla didn’t dare complain._

_But Ros’s quiet pride and curiosity placed her solidly in the upper levels of Division agents. “I’m glad, Ros. you’re going to make a fine agent.”_

_Ros returned the smile with a slightly less expansive one. “I look forward to it.”_

“ _Full debrief in two hours,” Amanda turned back to address the group as a whole. “Marta, you have the information from the ambassador’s computers?”_

“ _The computers such as they were, yes ma’am, although the majority of the files were hardcopies.”_

“ _Good, Carla wants to see it as soon as possible. Ros, come with me please, I want to talk to you privately before the debrief.”_

_Amanda thought the stars in Ros’s eyes could have powered a small aircraft._

_They spent hours together that day, picking over every detail of Ros’s mission, every emotion she felt. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget his face,” Ros confessed finally, worn down by the chaos of the morning and the lengthy debriefs. Amanda’s office was a sanctuary, just as it had always been, and she was finally free to say everything she thought._

“ _That’s a good thing,” Amanda said quietly. “In truth, I would be worried if you didn’t think like that.” When Ros looked skeptical, she laughed. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, but we’re not all cold privateers like Percy is. It takes a certain type of person to kill and feel no remorse. And I would never want you to be that type of person.”_

“ _I’m glad I don’t have to be,” Ros replied, resting her head on Amanda’s shoulder. Amanda ran her fingers through the other woman’s hair, making no effort to damp the pride that welled up in her at the look in the young agent’s eyes. She turned and pressed a kiss to the top of Ros’s head._

“ _And I am glad that we’re on the same page here.” Ros looked up at that, one hand reaching up to caress Amanda’s cheek._

_Amanda shivered, seeing all too clearly what would happen next and running through a hundred reasons why it would be a terrible idea. But when Ros said “thank you” she replied with “you’re welcome,” and when time seemed to stand still around them she didn’t try to break the moment. And when Ros kissed her, she kissed back._

She blinks the memories away furiously, angry at herself for allowing the lapse. Until Magritte took her, she hadn’t thought of Amanda in years, and now that Amanda was back she wasn’t just content to sit next to her in a New York cafe like she wasn’t a physical representation of everything that had gone wrong in the past months. She was invading Ros’s subconscious as well, dragging up memories long – and better – forgotten, and Ros was letting her. _N_ _o more._

She slips the razor blade out of her sleeve. Before Amanda can react, she has the blade pinned between their wrists, and Amanda gasps as the cold metal presses into her skin. “We both know how this works,” she says, and Amanda looks back at her with eyes wide and dark with surprise and lust. Ros thinks of the number of Amanda’s kinks she must be fulfilling and wishes there were another way to do this.

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I came here because I wanted answers from you, and because I need a new life and you are very practiced in providing those. If it turns out neither of those things are possible, I have no qualms about leaving you here dead and finding another life.”

“Hm,” Amanda considers that for a moment. Ros watches carefully, trying to read Amanda’s thoughts behind her rapid blinks. But this, finally is different: Amanda is opaque for the first time, the minute expressions that Ros remembers seeing during international negotiations giving no hint as to her final decision.

Finally, she sighs and uses her free hand to sweep her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m yours, Rosalind. What do you want to know?”

Quickly bypassing her first two responses – _don’t call me Rosalind_ and _you were never mine; and I haven’t been yours for years_ _–_ she stops to think, almost the first moment she’s had to do so since waking up in her own coffin. _W_ _hat do I want to know?_ Half of her questions Amanda can’t answer: questions like _when can I go back to england_ and _why did you ever let things with_ _A_ _dam progress that far_ and _why did I let myself get caught like that stupid, amateur_ and _will_ _J_ _o be okay_ and _bloody hell_ _J_ _uliet why needles, why then, did she tell you or was that just a lucky guess?_ Those are all questions she will have to answer for herself in the days to come. She settles for a deceptively simple one: “Why me?”

“Magritte asked.”

Considering the terms on which she and the French agent had parted after their time at Division, that was unlikely. There was a reason she had gone to Magritte last when searching for Zaf. Her lip curls, and she presses the blade harder into Amanda’s wrist. “Try again.”

Amanda laughs darkly. “She did. She asked me if I had any assets in Europe she could bring into Yalta. I suggested you. She was . . . less than enthusiastic.”

“Really. I wouldn’t have guessed she would be reluctant to bring the woman she left for dead and useless into her secret global conspiracy,” Ros replies, voice tinged with bitterness. Even now, when she had a hard time conjuring up anything but hate for the other woman, the memory of Magritte’s departure brings along a vague sadness. She ignores the voice in her head telling her she’s no better. _I had no choice. Magritte made all of hers a long time ago._

Amanda studies her intently from across the table, eyes bright, head tilted in a posture achingly familiar from years spent across a Division briefing table. She, unlike Ros, seems to be having no trouble with the mind-reading tonight. “You always worked quite well as a team, the two displaced young women. But you never reacted to killing with the same joy that she did. I worried that between her and Juliet, Yalta would become unsustainable. They needed you, Ros,” she leans forward slightly, every line of her body begging Ros to believe her, but there’s no truth to be found in her eyes. “They needed you to temper them, to bring the real change they always wanted.”

It takes a long moment of very concentrated effort before Ros trusts her voice again. “I’m not going to ask if you know what they did to me, because of course you do. You probably created most of those protocols yourself.”

“Mmhm.” that’s the hum that means _you’re right, but neither of us are ever going to say it out loud._

“But everything you told me that day I went back to Six – all that crap about me being an independent agent now – it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Pretty words for a pretty girl, was that it? Was I _ever_ anything more than a pawn to you?” Her voice breaks on the last word. She supposes everyone should be grateful that’s the only thing that does.

“No,” Amanda says, considering. “And yes, and yes. In that order.”

 _G_ _o to hell,_ Ros thinks, but she can’t bring herself to say it. So they wait.

“What are you going to do, Ros?” Amanda finally breaks the silence, leaning so far across the table that her lips brush Ros’s ear. To anyone else in the cafe they could be friends, lovers even. No one could see the razor blade clasped between their wrists. One twist of the hand, by either of them, and the other would be dead. “Slit my wrists right here at the table? Take me outside, fuck me in the alley before I get a knife in the back? Or do I have to wait for the bullet in the skull, like Magritte and Sholto and Juliet do?”

Ros shivers. _T_ _empting,_ she wants to say, _so very tempting, especially the alleyway._ _B_ _ut . . ._

“Much as I would love to take you up on one of your charming offers, you are in charge of one of the very few agencies that doesn’t want me dead. I’m not prepared to sacrifice that.”

 _Y_ _et,_ hung unspoken between them.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Life at Division as an agent is different than life as a trainee seconded from Six. The people she passes in the hall stare at her – not because she’s died and come back to life, they’ve all done that. Ros thinks it’s because she’s British, but when she tells Amanda that during one debriefing, the other woman gives a less-than-ladylike snort. “Please. It’s because Percy put a hit out on you a couple years ago. They’re all wondering what changed.”

Not much renders Ros speechless anymore, but that does, and she sets her mug down hard enough to send tea sloshing all over the glass tabletop. Amanda doesn’t quite sigh as she gets up to find a towel, but Ros ignores her as she stammers “What – when – for fuck’s sake, Amanda, when were you planning on telling me that?”

Amanda shrugs. “You were in deep cover in Bosnia with Six, I found it more expedient to take out Percy’s agents and . . . dissuade him from pursuing you any further.”

Bosnia meant eight years ago, and while there’s something to be said for Amanda not wanting to break her cover, there’s also something to be said for letting an old partner know when multiple someones are trying to assassinate them. “You might’ve tried, at least.”

“I assure you, you were never in any danger.” Her tone is clipped. Ros, recognizing the danger signs, gets up to leave but can’t resist one last comment.

“So you put the mission above me. I guess we really are completely done then.”

She glances back from the doorway. Amanda looks . . . lost.

 

*

 

One thing doesn’t change, though, and that’s the fieldwork. Percy despises her, she can tell, and that means that his right hand man, Michael does as well. Michael doesn’t know anything about her past at Division, doesn’t know anything about her at all, but he’s more than content to follow Percy’s lead. She wasn’t expecting a warm welcome from anyone, but she had expected civility, at the least. Michael and Percy are loath to give her either, so she finds herself volunteering for more and more missions.

Percy can’t exactly say no, because Division’s stretched for resources with so many of their agents in deep cover missions abroad. It’s better out in the field, where she doesn’t have to face Percy’s hostility or mull over the vast, blank gap that’s established itself between her and Amanda. Part of her is thankful for it, because it means she’s not grappling with her feelings toward the other woman on a daily basis; part of her wishes she had just one friend in Division’s concrete halls.

She has an apartment, of course, Percy probably justifying the expense by telling himself at least this way he doesn’t have to interact with Ros. But her flat in London was never really home, and she sees no reason to make this apartment in New York home either. So the fieldwork offers some relief.

But not too much. Every time she goes out with one of the younger recruits – and it’s often, someone seems to have decided she’s to serve as a mentor – she wants to shake them. _N_ _o, no,_ she wants to say. N _o, this isn’t the life you want, I promise you._ _I_ _t’s not all adventure and fun and games._ _W_ _e kill people, torture them, break them._ Division, after all, has fewer compunctions about minor details like the Geneva Conventions than the service does. She wants to take the young ones out of this life while they still have some chance at living again.

It’s not that Division lies to them, because ultimately every mission they go on can be justified by citing homeland – or, in the cases of missions Amanda sometimes tosses to them, international – security. True, sometimes the justification comes in a very roundabout way, but for the most part, Ros feels like she’s making just as much of a difference as she did in the service. No, it’s that Division makes the young people that come through its doors hard and cruel. Michael trains them to kill, but Amanda trains them to be killers. She was too idealistic to see it when she was on the receiving end of the training, but now she understands. It makes sense, suddenly, why she always felt a distance between her and everyone else on the Grid, why every relationship she thought she might be able to love was crumbled and broken from the very start.

She wants to lay all the blame at Amanda’s feet, say _look, look what you turned me into, look what you’re doing to these people._

When she she and two junior agents watch Amanda interrogate a mafia ringleader, about a month after she arrives at Division, she feels nothing. Not even a faint, detached awe at Amanda’s truly incredible technique. She is a master craftswoman, the body writhing and screaming beneath her her canvas. Ros wonders if the agents next to her feel anything either. (She knows they don’t.)

She tells herself it’s enough that she doesn’t derive the same pleasure from the torture that Amanda does.

She knows it’s a lie.

She still can’t stop herself from watching, or from returning to Amanda for mission after mission.

Amanda might be brilliant at her job, but even she can’t create killers out of nothing.

 

*

 

Ros doesn’t quite develop a routine – routine implies comfort, routine implies stability, and she’s gone to great lengths to avoid injecting either of those into her life for the time being, and wouldn’t Amanda love to analyze the hell out of that – but she does develop an idea of what to expect from each new day. But the tentative equilibrium she’s established is shattered after she’s been at division for about a month and a half.

Her first indication is when Amanda joins her on the firing range. there’s nothing odd about Amanda being on the range necessarily – she’s a crack shot, has been the whole time Ros has known her and all appearances to the contrary Ros highly doubts Amanda uses recruits for target practice. But when Ros pulls off her ear guards and turns to greet her, Amanda slips her arms around her waist and presses something cold and hard into her hand. “What-?” Ros begins to ask, but Amanda cuts her off.

“No,” she whispers against Ros’s ear, arms tightening as Ros tries to break free. “Listen to me Ros. Put that on, put your ear protection back on, and come with me to the back two targets. I need to tell you something and we can’t be overheard.”

Ros pulls back slightly, uncomfortably aware of where, exactly, the two of them had ended up last time they’d found themselves in this position _(Ros laughing and pressed flat against the wall, Amanda’s hot breath tickling her thighs as the nightclub’s music swelled around them-)._ _B_ ut one look at Amanda’s face convinces her they’re in no danger of a repeat performance. Amanda looks spooked, and as she runs her fingers unobtrusively over the object in her palm, she recognizes the contours of the Division-issue incongruously named earwigs. “All right, then.”

Amanda lets her go with a quick peck on the cheek, crossing to the racks along the wall and loading her handgun with the ease of long familiarity. She doesn’t say anything else until they’ve both taken their places at the targets and Ros has taken her first shots.

“I got a very interesting call today from a woman at the service,” Amanda says conversationally, and Ros hears her clearly over the gunfire. “She seems to think I have one of her assets.”

“Oh?” Ros asks, keeping her face carefully blank. “I hadn’t realized you were in the habit of kidnapping foreign intelligence agents, Amanda. Thinking of starting a new job?” There was one other reason someone at five might be calling, but – she stops herself before she can finish the thought. no use getting her hopes up.

Amanda laughs and pulls her target back. Five shots around the heart, one straight through the head. Any one of them would have been fatal on their own. “No, this particular agent did a very good job of disappearing all on her own I’m afraid. Someone called Range Finder.”

 _B_ _loody hell._ Ros’s expression doesn’t change but her hand jerks, the shot going wide and slamming the target’s shoulder. She had thought Harry was the only one who knew that particular callsign of hers.

“Through and through. Minor to moderate bleeding, good for a thirty second respite assuming that wasn’t the target’s gun arm,” Amanda observes clinically, seemingly ignorant of the monkey wrench she’s just thrown into Ros’s world. Ros is silent, eyes narrowed as she tries to formulate a response to that, but Amanda beats her to it. “Connie James wants you to continue running operations for the service while you’re here.”

“Who knows?” Ros says coldly, realizing for the first time that her gun has swerved to point straight at Amanda’s heart.

The other woman tilts her head, unfazed. “That you’re alive? Harry and Connie. Jo guessed at your funeral but no one’s told her for sure.” _J_ _o._ _O_ _f course, out of everyone, it would be her._ _S_ _he was always the most observant._ “That they want Ros Myers to work for them undercover as Range Finder? Connie. Me. Probably Harry.”

The silence hangs between them, oppressive. Ros waits for the _don’t shoot the messenger_ joke she would get from one of her own team, but Amanda just gazes at her, daring her to confront the emotions boiling just below the surface.

Finally: “Rosalind Myers is dead.”

She turns, empties her clip into the target’s head. Leaves without cleaning the gun. Pretends she doesn’t hear Amanda asking, “Who took her place, then?”

 

*

 

If Amanda has ever taught her anything, it is that she can only run for so long. This time, she counts herself lucky to get back to her apartment before Amanda’s words come crashing back down over her. _W_ _ho took her place?_

Rosalind Myers died and was buried in a small cemetery in England. Her funeral was quiet: a way to give comfort to her friends and to appease the Americans. She was buried without any honors and there was no family there to watch coffin be covered. Just a man from the CIA to make sure she wasn’t breathing, and a man she had hoped she could love to give her money and a fake passport.

Rosalind Myers came to New York running away from a name that didn’t fit her anymore and an organization she couldn’t belong to, running to a woman she had thought she could love. She went on missions and shot the bad guys and pretended that she was facing down the demons of her past. Acted like nothing had changed, like Division had never broken her and it didn’t now hate her.

Rosalind Myers, to put it quite bluntly – and yes, she was always good at that, even if she wasn’t so good at accepting it – no longer had any bloody idea what the fuck she was doing with her life. She wasn’t even sure she should call this phantom existence life.

She sighs and, suddenly very tired, kicks off her shoes and flops down on the couch, shutting her eyes like it would be that easy to shut out the world. It’s not, it never was for Ros; it isn’t for . . . _who took her place?_

Death offered her a chance to reinvent herself, a chance that she had quite simply spat in the face of. In truth – in truth, she had simply forgotten how to do anything else. And now she was paying the price, wrapped in the blood and deception of Division again. The idea that the service would take her back, after everything she had done to them (Harry’s disbelief, Adam’s horror, Jo looking so lost, Connie the only one with any sort of understanding in her eyes, and, god, Ros didn’t even want to touch what brought _that_ look up) – she had never allowed herself to hope for that. She had known, when she threw her lot in with Yalta, that there was no going back. Even as she struggled to keep Five ahead of Yalta, juggling the memories associated with Magritte with her mission – missions? – keeping herself out from under the spotlight of the investigations, she had known (just like she had known on her last op for Division) that she was done.

But Ros wasn’t done. Not with division, not with the service. Amanda knew it, Connie knew it, and she herself must have known it, somewhere in those hidden places where she locks her feelings away. Introspection takes time, you see, and introspection causes grief, and when you spend your days saving your country you don’t have the time to spare, or the luxury to grieve. But now, in her fiercely embraced exile, she has both the time and the luxury, and it makes her want to scream and cry and smash the pretty little knickknacks that came with the apartment.

She doesn’t, of course. She leaves, quietly and without a fuss, and goes in search of a burn phone and whiskey, in that order.

The alcohol tastes like victory.

*

Amanda is blocking the entrance to the elevators when Ros comes back to the silo the next morning. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back,” Amanda greets her, and it’s a lie they both know is told out of habit, rather than malice.

“Yes, that would be why you were standing in an entryway perhaps two degrees warmer than Siberia in February in a sleeveless dress,” Ros says, resisting the urge to smirk at the older woman as she debates how easy it would be to simply brush past Amanda – assuming, of course, she was willing to endure the inevitable awkwardness that would ensue while Division’s notoriously slow elevator creaked its way to the surface.

The decision’s made for her when one of Amanda’s perfectly manicured nails hits the call button for her. “I didn’t think you could stay away,” Amanda admits, and Ros feels the faint stirrings of what might have been triumph at the thought that she’s finally done something without Amanda knowing about it beforehand.

“Yeah, well, not like I can just waltz back onto the Grid – though I’d love to see Hogan’s face if I did.” Amanda smiles in acknowledgment of her point, and Ros recognizes it as one of her genuine ones (to understand Amanda you have to understand: she has more smiles hidden away in the corners of her mouth than Division has guns in its armory. You have to learn where they fall on the spectrum of real and fake, because if you don’t, it might kill you one day).

They lapse into silence then, silence that is only broken by the arrival of the elevator. Amanda catches her wrist once they’ve entered, staring intently at her with bright eyes made even more vivid by dark blue eyeliner. “I mean it Ros. I’ve loved having you back at Division but I meant what I said yesterday. You need time to figure out who you want to be after this little death stunt of yours, and I want to help you with that, if – if you’ll let me.”

Ros stares, speechless, wondering if she’s heard correctly. Wondering when the last time Amanda asked permission before rummaging around in someone’s psyche was. Amanda continues before Ros can trust herself to form full sentences again. “We worked well together when you were here the first time, Ros, but we’re both smart enough to know that that ended badly for everyone.” _E_ _veryone including us and also that small matter of the town in the_ _F_ _rench_ _A_ _lps that no longer exists,_ Ros thinks, but she stays silent, waiting for Amanda to finish. “I don’t want us to go back to that.”

 _S_ _he’s scared_ , Ros realizes suddenly. _S_ _cared that she can’t trust herself around me, scared that it’s so easy for us to fall back into our old patterns, to fuck and fight and sew each other back up and say it doesn’t matter because we’re keeping each other alive and that’s love._ It’s why every move, every conversation between them since Ros got off the plane has been so carefully choreographed and calculated, like there’s a bomb they’ve been passing back and forth and praying it won’t blow up. _A_ _nd it has to be why Amanda looked spooked when she told me about_ _C_ _onnie’s call yesterday._ _S_ _he knows that if I’m working for_ _S_ _ection_ _D_ _and her it’ll be different this time, and she’s scared to want it._ _B_ _ut she does want it._ _A_ _nd so do I._

“Going back is the last thing I want for us, Amanda,” she says honestly, and just the fact that she’s able to finally say it – to finally admit that no matter how good of a relationship it seemed to be at the time, the loss of what she and Amanda had during her Division days is not something that she wants to mourn – feels almost as good as the first breath of air she took after surfacing from the Thames.

Another new beginning. Well. She’s had enough practice with those lately, what’s one more?

 

 


End file.
